Saturday, August 12, 2006

NIGHTMARE!

I had the most horrible nightmare last night. I don’t know if I can even share it with a clear conscience, lest the horrroooooorrrrrrr! spread to innocent people…

Oh what the heck.

I dreamed {takes deep breath and steadying sip of coffee} that I {dramatic pause} still lived with my parents!

DUH-DUH-DuuuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHN!!!!!

In my dream last night, after spending a hard day working on my sunburn in what was either a very large backyard vegetable garden or a rather small working farm, I came into the house, my house down to the last teacup, had a lovely conversation with my parents, who were bustling around doing parent-stuff, we put the kids (yes, all four of my kids) to bed and went to bed ourselves – mom and I in my bed upstairs, dad and my husband in the sofa bed downstairs.

Because this was their house, and we lived here under their beneficent gaze, and given that we had no savings and housing was starting off at about $2B for a one bedroom condo it looked like that was that.

I tell you what, I had a burning need to open up Quicken and reassure myself about some things. Savings account, money market, brokerage account, CD funds, mortgage payments, car loan, credit cards…whew. Yes. It appears that all my finances are still mine. This is still my money pit, and a quick glance out the backyard reveals that my play equipment and lawn has not in fact been replaced by a quarter acre of neatly plowed (now, how would I have managed that, I wonder?) rows of vegetables in constant need of tending.

Whew.

Whew, whew, whew!

Don’t get me wrong. I love my parents. And they’re very easy people to be around, even when living in the same airspace with them. I was, in fact, rather late to leave the nest. Neither party felt the burning need to get away from the other party – my parents didn’t push, and I didn’t pull.

But that was then. This is now. The idea of having to move back in with my parents makes my skin go all creepy-crawly. The idea of being >>>this<<< close to forty and so utterly destitute that I can’t even afford a car (my husband had to borrow my dad’s wheels to get to work! Oooooooh, the humanity!), and so completely without an oar that I can’t even ponder the idea of independence…

Someday, my babies are going to be all grown and flown. As inconceivable as it may be, the Denizens will one day go forth to wreak havoc in the world without my constant direction. Free to make their own triumphs and mistakes.

Free to have nightmares about living with their parents forever and ever.

I just hope they will have the same ability to reassure themselves; that they too will be able to finger the physical mortgage papers, to review the college funds for their children, to look over the credit card statements and see all the hundreds and hundreds of dollars they’re spending on their Dens, their Dens, the car payments and oh yeah, the registration is up next month…